Simon Ager, otherwise known as Omniglot, is well known in the language learning community. His online language resources are unparalleled, and provide perhaps the best, most accessible alphabetic reference available.

For those of you who are starting out with Russian and are still frustrated by the Cyrillic alphabet, be sure to check out his history of the Cyrillic alphabet page, where you can learn not just today's standard alphabet, but how it evolved over time. Better yet, bookmark the page while you're there.

I have on several occasions gotten completely sucked into the explanations of various exotic alphabets for hours!

For those of you always in search of other great language blogs, Omniglot has you covered in this category as well. Check out (and subscribe to) the Omniglot Blog. Common features include a 'mystery language' audio quiz, where readers fiercely debate the origin of an unidentified speaker. Simon also provides and ad hoc Word of the Day from time to time, in which he focuses on an engaging lexical item from on eof the various languages he is currently studying.

Oh, and we have a special message to Simon today: с днем рождения! Many happy returns sir!